David Hare’s diary: Actresses are smarter than journalists

So mysterious, the Conservative party. In every poll, our five most admired institutions are the NHS, the BBC, the Royal Mail, the armed forces and the monarchy. The Conservative party wants to destroy four of them. Conservative? The only traditional aspects of British life to be preserved are private education, executive over-pay, the rights of both the security services and the press to wiretap innocent citizens, and the delegation of foreign policy to Washington. Some Tories even want to send high-speed trains zipping through their own rural constituencies. Ministers muttering into their beards about how everything must be changed and changed utterly more closely resemble the Trotskyites of my youth than Conservatives. Shouldn’t the party change its name? The word ‘Maoist’ somewhere in there would be helpful.

Last winter, lovers of the arts scored a rare victory by getting the government to recognise the foolishness of their proposed English baccalaureate. But during the arguments I tired of hearing that drama belonged in any core curriculum because it would give the young the chance to acquire the theatre-going habit. What a horrible idea! Who wants to acquire a habit? I go to the theatre roughly 30 times a year, and nearly everything I see is good. We suffer only a couple of turkeys, and that’s because my wife and I choose by certain rules: stick to what’s new, stick to what’s primarily created by writers — avoid West End poster-products and displays of director-driven auteurism. We go for work which relates to life as lived outside the theatre, rather than to transient fashions within. In that way, we have secured a playgoing history of perpetual discovery and refreshment — one I would wish available to every young person. It has been the opposite of a habit.